By: Joe Lang
Despite being a huge fan of Dean Magraw and having written about three different incarnations of his musical persona, I still hadn't heard what sounded to be his most adventurous outing as of Wednesday evening. The virtuosic guitar chameleon was fronting his jazz fusion trio, Red Planet, with Chris Bates on upright bass and Jay Epstein on drums. The band was billed as "creative jazz for the 21st Century, inviting you to put one ear on the launching pad of neo-bop Trane/Hendrix/Monk burn, and your other ear on the celestial weightlessness from the musical cosmos," which sounded right up my alley. In fact, I would describe the former two artists as chief inspirations in my personal band's repertoire and my own playing.
Like when I saw Moveable Feast on a Wednesday a few weeks ago, attendance was pretty sparse, even for the paltry $3 cover. After shooting the breeze between sets with Magraw, apparently the attendance was good for a Wednesday night (especially considering Joey DeFrancesco was playing his third and final night at the Dakota and The Nomad World Pub always features jazz on Wednesday nights). I arrived just after 9 p.m., as I didn't want to miss a note of Magraw's electric excursions into the unknown. After being blown away by Magraw's electric playing at St. Patrick's Day's Boiled in Lead performance, I was ready to hear him rip apart some Hendrix and Trane.
As I arrived, Magraw was playing some really ambient and brooding slide guitar on his Strat as Epstein was setting up his kit. The trio went into the dressing room for a while and took the stage around 9:30, opening with a cover of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." The dark and droning piece found Magraw using volume swells to emulate Coleman's slow and melancholy playing. Aftewards, Magraw switched over to his hollow body Gibson for a more straight ahead piece, which was nice, but didn't capture the emotion and slow smoldering intensity of the opener. Throughout the night, Magraw switched between the two guitars; the single coil Strat usually signaled more rawkish and expansive music, whereas the hollow body was more subdued.
Magraw put his guitar down after the opener and joked that the band would be playing their Coltrane medley. After asking the audience if they wanted to know what songs were in the medley, I joined in with some others to enthusiastically shout "Yes!" Magraw read off the tracks that came from all different periods in Trane's catalog. The band attacked Trane"s "Lonnie's Lament," "Big Nick," "Africa," and "Resolution" with scorching abandon and a tenderness that breathed life and originality into the tracks. On "Africa," Magraw began by playing a funky distorted riff a la early Led Zeppelin, and allowed his Strat to max out its volume level with powerful and distorted chords. As the song came crashing to an end, someone at the back of the bar shouted "Freebird" amongst the cheers, and Magraw smiled and held up the rock devil symbol. The band played one more tune and took a "brief but meaningful" break.
For the second set, half the already scant audience had left, leaving me and about four other people. The band played mostly originals, including Magraw's "Seventh One," a fusion version of Van Halen's "Beautiful Girls," dubbed "'Van Halibut,' cause we're fishing," by Magraw. They also played a slow and beautiful, yet almost unrecognizable version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which sounded much like Bill Frisell's 'Goodnight Irene" off his recent East/West album. The band hammered off a couple of originals and Thelonius Monk's "Well You Needn't"; and bid goodnight to the crowd: me, a couple, and employees of the Artists' Quarter.
As a guitarist, there were times in the set where I wished Magraw relied less on his volume swells and pinch harmonics, which in moderation provide brilliant sounds and textures, but in overdose can come off as gimmicky. Other than that, however, the band proved themselves - along with the Bad Plus - as the baddest jazz outfit in the Twin Cities. Magraw will be playing with his other fusion band, 8 Head, at the Cedar Cultural Center on April 2, and will return to the Artists' Quarter to record a live album with Red Planet on April 6. For fans of virtuoso musicianship and progressive music, neither show is to be missed.
Location Info:
Artists' Quarter
Artist Info: Red Planet
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